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This paper explores the significance of schools' data infrastructures as a site of institutional power and (re)configuration. Using 'infrastructure studies' as a theoretical framework and drawing on in-depth studies of three contrasting Australian secondary schools, the paper takes a holistic look at schools' data infrastructures. In contrast to the notion of the 'platformatised' school, the paper details the ad hoc and compromised ways that these school data infrastructures have developed -- highlighting a number of underlying sociotechnical conditions that lead to an ongoing process of data infrastructuring. These include issues of limited technical interoperability and differences between educational requirements and commercially-led designs. Also apparent is the disjuncture between the imagined benefits of institutional data use and the ongoing maintenance and repair required to make the infrastructures function. Taking an institutional perspective, the paper explores why digital technologies continue to complicate (rather than simplify) school processes and practices.

In this paper we report on a teacher education co-design project that explored Australian pre-service primary generalist teachers' ideations of the pedagogical links between health education and nature. As part of their coursework in a Master of Teaching degree at an Australian University, students were invited to design a Victorian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (VC:HPE) activity that connected primary curriculum (F-6) with nature. We conducted a 3-hour suite of online learning activities and prompts using Zoom, Padlet and Moodle. The data consists of the students' curriculum design artefacts as well as recordings of the group discussions and non-assessment-based presentations of their work. Drawing on theories of child-nature interaction, we present an analysis of the ways in which n = 72 pre-service teachers across 18 groups of 4-5 educators conceptualised links between 'nature' and HPE across their activity designs. Prior to the workshop, the majority of pre-service teachers had not previously considered links between the HPE learning area and nature. Through the activities of the co-design workshop, students were surprised with the variety of pedagogical possibilities that were able to be made. There was much student discussion about the possibilities and limitations of balancing safety and risk in their nature-based activity designs. We present a thematic analysis of the quality of student-nature interactions in the groups' learning designs through: (i) exploration; (ii) embodiment; (iii) cultivation; (iv) appropriation; and (v) representation. The analysis and discussion has implications for the way quality health education is linked to nature-based learning environments, teacher education and contemporary curriculum enactment that incorporates nature and the environment as part of the learning design.

The use of digital technologies within schools is leading to the increased generation, processing and circulation of data relating to students. To date, academic research around this 'datafication' of schools and schooling has tended to focus on institutional issues of governance and commercialisation, with relatively little consideration of students' experiences. Drawing on focus group discussions with 62 students across three Australian secondary schools, the paper explores students' experiences of school datafication in terms of power, surveillance and affect. It highlights students' relatively constrained and distanced relations with school technology use, schools' use of data to enforce student accountability and self-regulation of behaviour, as well students' perceived powerlessness to engage agentically in digital practices. Drawing on notions of 'digital resignation' and 'surveillance realism', the paper concludes by considering the extent to which students might be supported to meaningfully engage with (and possibly resist) the constraining 'atmospheres' of datafication.

This paper considers the subjectivation of students in light of the increasing amounts of digital data that are now being produced within schools. Taking a lead from critical data studies and the sociology of numbers, the paper draws on staff interviews in three Australian secondary schools to explore the various types of student data being generated, and the forms of student subjectivities that result. In particular, the paper contrasts the 'holistic' possibilities that some school leaders and administrators ascribe to data in terms of expanding the capacity to 'know' students, against the limited ways that data is actually being used within the schools. Most notably, the paper details how digital data appears to be configured within schools' official data procedures and practices to build student subjectivities and position students in narrow terms of performance and attendance. The paper also highlights how teachers make practical use of these limited data 'profiles' in a relational manner -- as a way of stimulating dialogue with students to know them better, rather than a source of precise calculation. In this sense, the paper considers how 'data' might be reframed in educational discourse as a practical starting-point for teacher inquiry and professional judgment rather than an imagined source of all-encompassing knowledge.

Educational researchers are showing a growing interest in Participatory Design (PD) and other collaborative co-design approaches. This paper considers the ways in which education researchers considering PD can benefit from drawing on the approach's heritage in the 1970s' Scandinavian 'cooperative inquiry' tradition. In particular, the paper highlights four core principles from the Scandinavian tradition, i.e.: the pursuit of socio-ethical outcomes, sustained consideration of what constitutes 'participation' and 'practice', and PD as a design process. While positioning these principles in school-based research is not easy, the paper considers how this has been achieved within the field of child-computer-interaction -- an area of research that is also often conducted with children in educational institutions. While remaining mindful of the institutional constraints of school-based research, we argue that these Scandinavian principles can be borrowed and built upon by educational researchers -- thereby extending the scope and ambitions of educational PD research.

Contemporary schooling is seen to be altering significantly in light of a combined 'digitisation' and 'datafication' of key processes. This paper examines the nature and conditions of the datafied school by exploring how a relatively prosaic and longstanding school metric (student attendance data) is being produced and used in digital form. Drawing on empirical data taken from in-depth qualitative studies in three contrasting Australian secondary schools, the paper considers 'anticipatory', 'analytical' and 'administrative' aspects of how digitally-mediated attendance data is produced, used and imagined by school staff. Our findings foreground a number of constraints, compromises and inconsistencies that are usually glossed-over in enthusiasms for 'data-driven' education. It is argued that these findings highlight the messy realities of schools' current relationships with digital data, and the broader logics of school datafications.

Students' laptops are subject to growing digital forms of surveillance by their schools. Following the theoretical tradition of media "domestication," this paper examines the incorporation of Student Activity Monitoring Software (SAMS) into the everyday routines of one Australian secondary school. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, the paper details how SAMS was broadly accepted by school staff and students as complementing--rather than challenging--the moral economy of the school. With school leaders keen to increase student surveillance without being seen to diminish teacher professionalism, the paper shows how SAMS was appropriated and objectified in ways that teachers and students perceived as preserving established classroom power relations. At the same time, school leaders could maintain core school values while also projecting an appearance of innovation and being "data-driven." However, rather than this surveillance system being wholly "tamed," we also show how SAMS was leading to subtle shifts within the school--not least the surrendering of governance and accountability to the software company, alongside the further entrenchment of "soft surveillance" logics into classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of digital technologies within schools is leading to the increased generation, processing and circulation of data relating to students. To date, academic research around this 'datafication' of schools and schooling has tended to focus on institutional issues of governance and commercialisation, with relatively little consideration of students' experiences. Drawing on focus group discussions with 62 students across three Australian secondary schools, the paper explores students' experiences of school datafication in terms of power, surveillance and affect. It highlights students' relatively constrained and distanced relations with school technology use, schools' use of data to enforce student accountability and self-regulation of behaviour, as well students' perceived powerlessness to engage agentically in digital practices. Drawing on notions of 'digital resignation' and 'surveillance realism', the paper concludes by considering the extent to which students might be supported to meaningfully engage with (and possibly resist) the constraining 'atmospheres' of datafication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the significance of schools' data infrastructures as a site of institutional power and (re)configuration. Using 'infrastructure studies' as a theoretical framework and drawing on in-depth studies of three contrasting Australian secondary schools, the paper takes a holistic look at schools' data infrastructures. In contrast to the notion of the 'platformatised' school, the paper details the ad hoc and compromised ways that these school data infrastructures have developed – highlighting a number of underlying sociotechnical conditions that lead to an ongoing process of data infrastructuring. These include issues of limited technical interoperability and differences between educational requirements and commercially-led designs. Also apparent is the disjuncture between the imagined benefits of institutional data use and the ongoing maintenance and repair required to make the infrastructures function. Taking an institutional perspective, the paper explores why digital technologies continue to complicate (rather than simplify) school processes and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the subjectivation of students in light of the increasing amounts of digital data that are now being produced within schools. Taking a lead from critical data studies and the sociology of numbers, the paper draws on staff interviews in three Australian secondary schools to explore the various types of student data being generated, and the forms of student subjectivities that result. In particular, the paper contrasts the 'holistic' possibilities that some school leaders and administrators ascribe to data in terms of expanding the capacity to 'know' students, against the limited ways that data is actually being used within the schools. Most notably, the paper details how digital data appears to be configured within schools' official data procedures and practices to build student subjectivities and position students in narrow terms of performance and attendance. The paper also highlights how teachers make practical use of these limited data 'profiles' in a relational manner – as a way of stimulating dialogue with students to know them better, rather than a source of precise calculation. In this sense, the paper considers how 'data' might be reframed in educational discourse as a practical starting-point for teacher inquiry and professional judgment rather than an imagined source of all-encompassing knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational researchers are showing a growing interest in Participatory Design (PD) and other collaborative co-design approaches. This paper considers the ways in which education researchers considering PD can benefit from drawing on the approach's heritage in the 1970s' Scandinavian 'cooperative inquiry' tradition. In particular, the paper highlights four core principles from the Scandinavian tradition, i.e.: the pursuit of socio-ethical outcomes, sustained consideration of what constitutes 'participation' and 'practice', and PD as a design process. While positioning these principles in school-based research is not easy, the paper considers how this has been achieved within the field of child-computer-interaction – an area of research that is also often conducted with children in educational institutions. While remaining mindful of the institutional constraints of school-based research, we argue that these Scandinavian principles can be borrowed and built upon by educational researchers – thereby extending the scope and ambitions of educational PD research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]